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With more businesses moving to a hybrid or even completely digital workforce, it’s become more important than ever to keep employees engaged. It’s always been challenging to keep your team interested and motivated, but as millions of workers have learned, working from home presents its own obstacles.
So, what’s the best way to get employees excited about coming to work each day—even if their desk is the kitchen table? With virtual team-building icebreakers.
As we all navigate working in a remote team with the pandemic, team building is the missing piece. With the right activities, you can maintain a sense of culture and camaraderie, even without a physical office.
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In simple terms, team building consists of activities to have fun and build relationships. By removing some of the pressure your employees might feel during work, you can create a more cohesive team and work together even better.
Virtual team building creates activities so that everyone can feel at home (in a literal way, too!). No matter how good your remote onboarding during COVID-19 is, there’s still room to keep the culture growing after onboarding.
Good team building goes beyond just training employees remotely. Virtual team-building activities can help the company achieve its goals faster.
A common problem with remote workers is that they can be hesitant to communicate except for work topics. This lack of communication can slow down creative employee interaction, create silos, and stifle engagement. In fact, employee isolation has been shown to reduce productivity up to 21%, according to a study by Gallup.
With creative icebreakers, you can foster a more creative, communicative, and inclusive team culture. You may even be able to boost engagement and the bottom line for your business while making employees happier.
While team building can help any kind of remote work, it’s essential for newly remote teams. Groups that are used to being in an office together can enjoy the structure virtual activities provide.
Outside of virtual events and online exhibitions, many employees only see each other when there’s a conference call scheduled. Ice breakers help create interaction with people who might not see each other otherwise. In fact, socializing on a virtual team can improve communication patterns by up to 50%, according to a report by Harvard Business Review.
It might sound simple to create virtual team-building activities, but you need to keep a few principles in mind to make the activities as effective as possible.
First, create a more relaxed environment for the ice breakers and don’t tie them to work rewards or consequences. Some activities might involve a little fun competition, but don’t let it affect work or create sour feelings.
You’ll also want to make it a ritual to improve culture over the long term. Include regular ice breakers at different times of the week or before scheduled calls. A unified communication system can help you synchronize events across voice, video, live chat, SMS, and more. This way your team can engage on the channels they prefer.
And finally, mix it up. Use various activities to keep employees interested. We’ve listed a handful of these activities below.
These popular team-building activities are sure to be a hit at your workplace. We’ve divided up the ideas into five categories so you can decide where each one should fit based on your team’s culture and schedule.
These activities are great for learning more about other people on the same team. You can include them as part of your virtual onboarding plan or just include them in online meetings.
Team meetings can be tedious, so these simple activities can be a great way to get your employees energized and excited.
Not all work needs to be tedious, and not all games need to be unrelated to work! These activities are a great way to make a work project interesting and expand your team’s creativity.
Make team building ongoing by adding one of these fun activities to your schedule every week.
Structured events are great, but sometimes your team will want a teambuilding activity without a virtual event plan. Invite everyone to prepare a drink at home and enjoy one of these party games.
Remember, not everyone on your team may drink alcohol. In that case, you should check out alternative ways to host virtual happy hours that are inclusive to non-drinkers.
Just because you keep your team engaged and company culture thriving when you’re working together doesn’t mean the fun has to stop between each video call!
Which of these virtual icebreakers will you use at your next team meeting? Consider finding your favorites and explain them to your team. Repeat it a few times until everyone understands, then add a new activity to mix it up!
After a few virtual team-building sessions, start to build out a cadence. Use your calendar app via your email to build out bi-weekly, monthly, or even quarterly team-building activities. This will give your team something to look forward to when a regular cadence is established.
Over time, you’ll build a library of icebreakers your team knows, and you can keep everyone engaged in just a few minutes. If you’re serious about improving your culture and bottom line, that’s a return on investment you can’t miss.
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Brianne Snell
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